Boxing
by Arabesque Rhapsody
Summary: By now, Kyoko is fully aware of the dangers behind her brother's "boxing" matches. Written for day 8 of KHR-fest. I do not own KHR. R&R?


By now, Kyoko knows that "boxing" isn't actually a pair of boys circling each other in their underwear, oven mitts on their hands.

By now, Kyoko also knows that "sumo wrestling" didn't actually constitute of a pair of heavyset men taking turns at shoving each other out of a ring.

She lets Onii-chan believe that this is what she thinks that both of those terms actually mean. Sometimes, he stumbles home with a cut on an arm that couldn't possibly have been inflicted in a boxing match, and no sumo wrestling tournament should have left him _that _battered and bruised. Onii-chan isn't big enough for sumo wrestling anyways.

"Boxing" is a group of men with guns in their hands and "sumo wrestling" is conducted by groups of men who fully intend on wrestling to the death for their Bosses.

Seven years later, they're the same as they've always been. Onii-chan stumbles through the door with a new cut on his face. Kyoko peers out the kitchen where she's been preparing dinner, eyes widening at the blood streaming from his forehead.

Onii-chan doesn't seem to notice Kyoko's surprised expression as he belts out his typical greeting of, **"Tadaima, Kyoko! Today's boxing match was really extreme! So extreme that I ended up with a cut on my face again!"**

Kyoko's already running down the hall to collect a cold cloth, disinfectant, gauze pad, and medical tape in a small basket. **"Was it fun today?"** she asks him as he enters the kitchen, before she lays a hand on his shoulder, gently but firmly asserting that he wasn't getting away before she cleaned the cut.

Onii-chan gets the hint and sits down quietly. There was no getting away from Kyoko when she was concerned. Even in Namimori Middle, it was always Kyoko who patched him up. In their parents' eyes, boxing was a ruffian's sport, no place for a Sasagawa (Father was a businessman and Mother was a lawyer). A Sasagawa belonged in the classrooms with excellent marks on their exams. She still remembers the way that Mother and Father would pat her head because a Sasagawa should always be in at least the top ten percent of their class.

She remembers that they had stroked her hair and asked, when she was very little, whether or not she'd been harmed. Onii-chan had been the one with the cut on his face (and it's _still_ there to this day, still there to remind her).

Kyoko dabs at the cut on Onii-chan's forehead with the cloth before soaking its clean end with disinfectant. **"Ah, sorry, Onii-chan. This will sting a bit,"** she says as she presses it against his cut. Onii-chan doesn't make a peep, but she can tell that he's trying not to yell. Even at twenty-two, he's still a big baby to her.

She tapes the piece of gauze to her brother's forehead. **"Does it hurt?"**

**"No way! I wasn't extremely hurt, you know. It was an extremely small cut!"**

Kyoko clicks her tongue. **"Onii-chan, even if it's small, I still need to take care of it."**

Onii-chan shakes his head. **"Kyoko, you're probably extremely busy, aren't you? You need to worry about yourself."** But he stops speaking, suddenly, because Kyoko's squatting slightly to be eye-level with her older brother.

**"I know I don't ****_need_**** to take care of it, Onii-chan,"** she says with a smile (she wonders if she looks like Mother with that expression on). **"But I want to, okay? I don't mind patching you up after your boxing practices or sumo tournaments. You'll let me put band-aids on your face when you're old and wrinkly too, right?"**

**"Kyoko, that's weird. That's extremely weird."**

**"Onii-chan!"**

He laughs, and it's a sound that's loud and clear, a sound that she hopes will never fade. **"I'm kidding!"**

**"Onii-chan, you don't think it's weird?"**

This time, he snorts, and it's still a sound that Kyoko hopes that she'll never stop hearing. **"Of course not! I'm happy if you're happy. I'm extremely offended if you don't know that by now!"**

Kyoko clocks playfully him in the shoulder; all she needs is Onii-chan's expression to reaffirm that he probably regrets teaching her how to punch a man properly.


End file.
